Education at its best is about opening doors, opening minds, and inviting students to become powerful choice-makers as they forge their own pathways into a wider world. While many teachers long for teaching to be something transcendent and powerful, they all too often find themselves teaching obedience and conformity. This dynamic book--by two…

Ideas and issues based contemporary art is often seen as something to be avoided in schools, as the controversial subjects that it broaches are often perceived as problematic and inappropriate. However, by censoring education, it can be seen that educators are missing vital opportunities to confront the relevant personal, social, political and…

While there is substantive work in intercultural education, especially that which proposes intellectual or conceptual road maps for pedagogic interculturalism and, more specifically for the classroom, there is a need to surface the complexity of everyday intercultural classroom practices. This article reflects on some Singapore students' responses…

The aim of the present article is to point out the problematic issue of administrating PISA science literacy exam to the ultra-orthodox schools in Israel. It has been assumed that some texts included in the test may offend the feelings of the ultra-orthodox population or may contradict Orthodox upbringing and therefore constitute a cultural bias.

Universities struggling to recapture their Catholic identity in an increasingly pluralistic campus environment learn from "Idea of a University" that Catholic identity is fostered by two essential elements: a culture of the intellect and a loyal Catholic spirit. Catholics and non-Catholics can build vibrant Catholic campuses by working together to…

In-class debates are frequently used to encourage student engagement. Ideally, after researching both sides of the debate, students will form their own opinions based on what they have learned. However, in a large course of Environmental Science, opinions of students, when surveyed after the debate, were remarkably consistent with the position…

Art as social practice encourages active, critical reflections on relevant issues among real people in locally situated engagements and with unpredictable outcomes. This instructional resource focuses on art as social practice that puts critical value on processes of engagement over the creation of art products by exploring contemporary artists…

Lack or complete neglect of international experiences among social studies teachers leads to superficial understanding of the importance of the development of global competences among students, neglect to very important themes in citizenship education, or even informal taboo on some critical controversial topics that address sensitive questions of…

Why do we teach about the Holocaust and about other genocides? The Holocaust has been a compulsory part of the English National Curriculum since 1991; however, curriculum documents say little about why pupils should learn about the Holocaust or about what they should learn. Tamsin Leyman and Richard Harris decided to use the opportunity presented…

The University of South Africa (UNISA) has recently redesigned its honors degree in Gender Studies. The course design team members have been mindful of three key factors while redesigning this degree. First, we are aligning our course design with the demands of open and distance learning (ODL) and UNISA's institutional move to online delivery of…

Broaching controversial issues with critical reflective thought is integral to a democratic education and during the past few decades China has gradually reconceptualized its moral education curricula toward this end. Therefore, this study sought to explore the extent to which controversial issues are addressed and reflective thinking is developed…

The current study aims to highlight how Turkish students perceive important issues such as discrimination against women, violence that surfaced as a result of discrimination, alienation, inequality between men and women and isolation of women from work life. A total of 50 students participated in the study. Individual interviews were conducted.…

The current study aims to investigate social studies and science teachers' attitudes and classroom practices associated with controversial issues. The study is a qualitative research based on data collected through interviews and observation. Social studies and Science teachers participated in the current study which was conducted in Kirsehir, a…

This paper addresses using social media to promote pre-service science teachers' practices of Socio-Scientific Issue (SSI) based teaching in a science classroom setting. We designed our research in two phases. The first phase examined pre-service science teachers' perceptions about using social media to promote their SSI-based teaching. The…

This article examines the comment culture that accompanies documentary films on YouTube as a site of (geo) political education. It considers how viewers try to teach each other about the proper "place" of critique in response to the global, national, and local rhetoric featured in one environmental documentary film. YouTube viewers use…